Oct 3 Wed New York Historical Society Memories of WWII Show

Exhibitions at the New York Historical Society are often powerful time machines transporting us back to past eras with things on display that embody history rather than simply teach it, and seldom has this magical effect been more apparent than in the new show on New York City's participation in World War II, which will run October 5, 2012 – May 27, 2013
Just how physically grounded was the drama people lived through then is made vividly apparent in this remarkable show. One is returned to an era only 70 years ago where every artifact of daily life was cruder and heavier, yet simpler and more intelligible, and more tactile, than anything we have in our digitally ruled lives today.
The exhibition brings this change in atmosphere home with a wide array of objects left over from the time, from the very big and rather beautiful copper colored atomic accelerator with which Columbia University began the Manhattan Project (hence the name) to develop the A bomb, to a little khaki vest made for the homing pigeons carried by paratroopers.
A long list of evocative leftovers includes the weighty binoculars issued to the Navy, an actual Enigma coding machine rescued from a U boat, the iron canister for a depth charge proudly embossed with the maker's name, the simple MI Carbine and the bayonet sized knife (KA-BAR) issued to servicemen, a pretty bra made without wire to save steel, a double cone air raid siren, an Office of Civilian Defense helmet, a Sperry gun sight made for Mustang pilots and others, simple cloth uniforms, and a classic revolver issued to the staff of the Society in case the Germans invaded the city.
All these physical objects have a unsophisticated simplicity and a crude physical presence that is virtually unknown today, when laptops and cell phones have taken most of our instrumentation and the tools we use in life into an abstract sphere, where they are largely disembodied figments of our imagination, as if we were participating in a daily video game.
All these are backed up by photos and descriptions of the war itself, which unlike today's remote control encounters, placed placed so many in very real and present physical danger not only in combat but as they traveled the high seas infested with U boats to whom they were sitting ducks for torpedoes, at least until destroyers were made in sufficient numbers to defend them.
Along with the greater size and physicality of equipment there was the staggering size of the war itself, which makes the current wars around the globe, including Iraq and Afghanistan, look like burning bushes compared to the vast forest fire of World War II, a fiery Armageddon which consumed 57 million human lives before it burned out.
No fewer than 900,000 New Yorkers joined up, and their experience is seared into the collective memory of New York City. The metropolis played a leading role as the assembly and embarking point for American troops and equipment traveling to the European theater. The port became the busiest in the world, sending out as many as 100 ships at a time. In the first phase of the war these were prime targets for Hitler's U-boats, since they were silhouetted against the lights on shore for six months until the army ordered a blackout. Hitler's U-boats torpedoed so many so easily they called it "The Happy Time".
Yet among the younger population of the metro today, the experience is remote. "Many have no idea which side the Red Army was on" in this global conflict, which redrew the map and led to the Cold War, said Columbia professor Kenneth T. Jackson as he introduced New York and World War II, the new show at the New York Historical Society, on Wednesday (Oct 3).
Professor Jackson, who is Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia, noted that the Manhattan Project started at the University in 1939, and he pointed to a long copper tube with various pipes and handles protruding from it which, he said, was the very accelerator on which the A bomb work began. Meanwhile the Brooklyn Navy Yard became the biggest shipbuilding facility on earth, with 38,000 employees which turned out the battleship Missouri and hundreds of other Navy ships to transport troops and hunt down attacking U boats.
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WWII & NYC
October 5, 2012 – May 27, 2013
When World War II broke out, New York was a cosmopolitan, heavily immigrant city, whose people had real stakes in the war and strongly held opinions. WWII & NYC will explore the impact of the war on the metropolis, which played a critical role in the national war effort, and how the city was forever changed. The presence of troops, the inflow of refugees, the wartime industries, the dispatch of fleets, and the dissemination of news and propaganda from media outlets, changed New York, giving its customary commercial and creative bustle a military flavor. Likewise, the landscape of the city acquired a martial air, as defenses in the harbor were bolstered, old forts were updated, and the docks became high security zones. This grand consideration of the wartime metropolis will feature the compelling stories of those who experienced the war in a New York City context. The exhibition will range from the mobilization of workers to the frenzy of shipbuilding, from the home front arts and entertainment industry to the dispatch of troops to the European theater, from the struggles over Civil Rights and segregation to the Times Square celebration of V-J Day. These were the times that saw raucous men in uniform celebrating their last stateside moments, tearful families embracing their sons, women with lunch pails off to work, celebrity-studded bond rallies and calls for justice at home and abroad from African-American patriots. The exhibition will draw upon extensive collections at New-York Historical and on important loans from the US Navy, the Smithsonian Institution, the Mariners’ Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other institutions.

Professor Kenneth T. Jackson is the Barzun professor of history and the social sciences at Columbia University, currently teaching a course in American urban history. He introduced the topic of the exhibition to the assembled press.